Where is that little Fisky?

DPF attempt to “fisk” Annette King’s answers in the House is a bit thin.  Unsurprisingly, DPF’s position is the same as Bill English’s in that he’s not listening to what King is saying and, instead, is preferring his own inner arguments. Actually, I suspect the entire “fisk” approach is an elaborate excuse for a vanity post.  To a political nerd like ‘Farrier’ being named in the House is the equivalent of winning Lotto.

Frogblog’s reasonable question

Frogblog asks the reasonable question, “how petty can Nick Smith be about climate change?” It’s a good question. Smith’s play for a cheap political gag about the Ministry of Environment’s growing environmental footprint is pretty hollow.

Smith’s release is the political equivalent of making a fart noise when somebody bends over. You might get an immediate reaction - a snigger perhaps - but you shouldn’t get any deluded belief based on the reaction that you’ve done something sophisticated and/or meaningful.

Power’s Hard Yards…

We’ve already talked a bit about DPF’s relief John Key’s hard hitting speech on law and order to the Police Union…sorry…Police Association went so smoothly.

Although as the ‘haters and wreckers’ that we are we showed it was based on some pretty spurious scaremongering.

But let’s face it, aside from shouting “tax cuts!” in crowded corridors, Key’s announcement about improving Police’s “toolkit” is about the closest thing to resemble an actual policy coming out of National. So, I suppose we should be grateful for that small mercy. Maybe.

Anyway, those paying attention will recall that Key told the Police Union:

“In recent months, my Justice and Corrections spokesman, Simon Power, has put extensive work into developing those policies. He has consulted widely with sector groups, with experts, and with everyday New Zealanders.

With Simon’s guidance, National has put together a comprehensive and inter-locking set of policies that will improve New Zealand’s methods for dealing with the effects of crime, and at preventing crime from occurring in the first place.”

I was thinking about poor old Simon having to do all this “extensive work” on top of all his vigorous Caucus schmoozing (you know for the Deputy’s job when Key gets trashed) and having to chase prison vans for his next parliamentary question.

So I wondered how long it took poor old Simon to work up the DNA policy. There are so many ins and outs to work through. So many difficult moral, legal and ethical considerations to balance such as the difficult knife-edge of civil rights versus public safety. It must of been hugely difficult and challenging for young Power and Davey’s mates down at HQ.

And then I realised Key’s “new policy” for DNA testing was exactly the same as the one announced by his predecessor, Don Brash, in July 2004 (that’s over three years ago in old money) when he said:

“I promised that the next National Government will give police the powers they need to crack down on criminals – including DNA testing for all people arrested”

Suddenly it all made sense. Recycling old policies, rebadging them and calling them your own it’s a damned efficient way to do “extensive work” on “new” policies.

I wonder if HQ’s going for some sort of environmental angle here…you know, publishing recycled policies on recycled cardboard? Could be a winner with the BlueGreens!

Who’s on First?

Apologies to Abbott and Costello fans (no, not the Australian comedy double act I am talking about the original American duo). I love the classic “Who’s on First?” sketch. That sketch is an almost flawless piece of comedy - a bit like the Parrot sketch…OK, now I’ve probably lost the younger set completely.

But as I was saying, with a tip of the hat to Abbott and Costello, I want to know who in HQ scripted yesterday’s hilarious English/Brownlee double act? The Standard did a great item on this and our very own Wat mentioned this in his earlier piece. But someone who conspicuously didn’t mention it yesterday was DPF - which is unusual because he’s been assiduously quoting anything or anyone who makes any kind of guttural sounds about the Electoral Finance Bill.

But the gag was so funny, like “Who’s on First” it’s worth repeating and marking it out (note these are from Parliament’s uncorrected Hansard transcripts):

Hon Bill English: I seek leave to table an email from *Wayne Eagleson on 27 September to Heather Simpson making it quite clear that National will not be supporting the proposed extension of the existing legislation.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Hon Bill English: If a publication of a similar nature to the 2005 pledge card produced by the Labour leader’s office were to be released in the final 6 weeks of the election campaign next year by the parliamentary Labour leader’s office, provided it did not state: “vote for me”, would it be legal under the bill tabled by him yesterday?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I think it would be treated almost exactly the same way as this public advertisement put out by Mr English in 2002 on parliamentary spending, which subsequently he tells us was completely inappropriate and immoral. I might further note that Mr Eagleson was the person who told us that what National sought was to extend the current bill.

Gerry Brownlee: I have in my possession a document that sets out the fact that National was happy for a rollover, provided it would lead to a much shorter election period. I seek leave to table that document, along with the document of Mr Eagleson.

• Leave granted.

Cullen follows-up Brownlee’s candid revelation by delivering this comedic coup d’grace:

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: What I can confirm, thanks to the very helpful intervention by Mr Gerry Brownlee, is that Labour’s position is exactly the same as National’s on the parliamentary spending bill, except that National members want a shorter period of time for electoral spending because they have so much money in their pockets they cannot spend it if the limitations in that regard start on 1 January. They have been caught out by their own front bench on this question.

Visionless and Intellectually Bankrupt

DPF challenged his readers to identify the person who said this:

“Tax cuts are a path to inequality… They are the promises of visionless and intellectually bankrupt people”

Davey knows the answer. The joke, if you hadn’t already guessed it, is intended to highlight a supposed hypocrisy in Labour’s promise to cut taxes and its earlier perceived demonisation of tax cuts.

I know DPF is trying to be funny and make a point about inconsistency - but is there really such an hilarious inconsistency?

Making allowances for the cut and thrust of the political invective evident in the quote, the point to consider is - how would you describe a Party that advocates tax reductions on a purely political basis and does not look in detail at whether the current tax policy is providing sufficient revenue to support the traditional reasons of redistributive policies, repricing and representative accountability? Responsible? Smart? Savvy? Electable?

Advocating tax reductions without working out whether they are affordable or sensible - would probably fall into the categories of “visionless” and “intellectually bankrupt” unless, of course, you’re a political party embracing some sort of extremist form of economic neo-liberalism.

But let’s face facts, and it may be a little uncomfortable for those on the Left to admit: the National Party is effectively social democratic in nature. For the past fifty years, New Zealand has sustained a broad political consensus about the government’s regulatory and redistributional roles. National’s point of difference with other major political parties has been over extent, priorities and scope. And while Key may be shifting the Party to the outer bounds of the social democratic envelope with his privatisation agenda and what seems like a brewing war on worker rights - National, like it or lump, still falls within the social democratic consensus.

Put simply, National is about as close to classical liberal minarchists as Labour is to state communism or the Greens are to anarcho-environmentalism. And while some of the anacephalic kiwibloggers may like to bandy these kinds of labels to describe those they disagree with - they are basically irrelevant in the New Zealand setting.

It’s for this reason that we can tell National’s mantra of tax reductions was made on a half-cooked intellectual basis (to effect some sort of mantle of liberalism) and not based on sound economic forecasts or accurate assessments about whether or not such reductions would be sustainable. In short, you get the distinct impression National’s advocacy of tax cuts was a political gag to distract for its rather underdone manifesto and to differentiate the Party from its rivals.

We know Labour has agonised over whether or not it can and should cut taxes further than it already has (a fact often overlooked by the mainstream and deliberately by National is that Labour has already made tax reductions). The clinching argument for Labour was whether the excesses of revenue being currently collected would be sustainable into the future - something I would argue is a pre-requisite for prudent economic management.

OK there might be significance in Labour’s timing - but, at best, you’re talking about whether there would have been sufficient information to have made this policy decision last Budget. Labour says it didn’t (have all the facts) largely because of what officials were advising. Who knows? But even if you’re sceptical about Labour’s timing, we are only talking a matter of months.

DNA testing

I see DPF admits being relieved Key’s speech to the Coppers was so “smooth”. I guess in this context smooth means the mainstream media didn’t take Key’s nonsense apart as it so richly deserved. We’ve already demonstrated Key’s speech was a hopeless beat-up based on fear mongering.

But I think we were meant to all be impressed that National wanted to appear reasonable with its self-imposed restraint when announcing its intention to expand DNA sampling of criminals. National no doubt knew there would be a raft of do-gooder, civil libertarians who would squirm at such measures so when Key announced the testing policy he was careful to say (and this is taken from the copy of his speech on National’s site):

“will require DNA samples to be taken from all those arrested for offences punishable by a term of imprisonment”

Clearly, National had put a lot of thought into this…hadn’t it?

You’ll notice Key didn’t say “criminal offences” or “offences under the Crimes Act” did he? So it’s any offence punishable by a term of imprisonment. So what would that be?

Well, let’s start at “A”:

• Section 27 (2) of the Adoption Act provides for offences under the Act to be punishable by up to 3 months imprisonment.
• Section 24 of the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act provides for a sentence of one year imprisonment
• Part 10 of the Animal Products Act provides for all kinds of sentences of imprisonment of varying legnths between two and five years imprisonment
• and so on…and so on…

Mother! This could become onerous. I think you get the picture; there are literally thousands of offences punishable by terms of imprisonment. And somehow I don’t think compulsorily taking DNA samples from people charged under the Animals Products Act or any of the hundreds of other Acts with similar offence provisions represents a significant sop to those pesky civil libertarians or even those fiscally-minded naysayers who might challenge the value of sampling the DNA of tens of thousands of New Zealanders every year.

Key et al should also be wary of being hoisted by their own petard: after all, a false declaration made under the Electoral Act is punishable by imprisonment!

The cost of crime

DPF’s busy peddling the party line on the allegedly insincere nature of Labour’s tax promises. But no matter what Davey and HQ say, you just know National have been royally gazumped on tax.

So with the demise of National’s tax strategy it looks like they’re going to have to rely on the tried and true Tory favourites: law and order, privatisation, union-bashing and general scandal mongering.

While it’s going to be interesting watching how this all unfolds, I am going to be particularly interested in watching National’s evolving law and order policy. Icky’s analysis of the crime stats show National is whacking a pretty empty kettle here - but regardless of the true nature of crime in this country the fiscal consequences of National’s “getting tougher on crime” are significant. We know only too well how significant because the New Zealand taxpayers have had to foot a $0.9 billion capital programme to construct 1600 new prison beds. That’s more than half a million dollars in capital per new bed!

The current government is not immune from the law and order agenda and has already promised an additional 1000 police officers knowing that these extra cops will increase prosecutions for non-traffic offences by 5.2 percent and will require at least 250 new prison beds and a couple of new courts.

National has promised to follow through with the additional 1000 new police - but unlike the government’s initiative which sought to spread the deployments across emergency response, preventive community policing, investigations and traffic - National wants to focus on frontline policing (read response and investigations). No lollygagging on crime prevention and traffic for National - this is about being tough on gangs and other social undesireables!

The problem for National is there is a clear correlation between more active policing and prosecutions. Increasing front line policing will inevitably increase prosecutions and, ultimately, generate the need for more prisons, more judges, more support services…and, well, more cost!

It looks like the government pumped the prison system as much as it could to ensure the beds required to support the currently proposed additional police could be absorbed within the current system. But with that low-hanging fruit gone, it looks likely that any further increases in prisoner numbers generated by a “get tough” agenda will require genuinely new beds - which, as I observed above, may cost over half a million dollars each.

There’s a tendency in politics for conservatives to play up the left’s “tax and spend” tendencies. But in this case it seems National is inadvertantly promising significant spending increases.

We’ll watch with interest.

Well, that’s Key’s strategy scuppered…what next?

The Prime Minister has announced Labour will cut taxes building on the surpluses which she describes as being “structural”. DPF’s not happy. You’d think he’d be happy about the prospect of tax reductions. But not so. DPF is echoing the party line that this is too little too late.

But of course, the real reason for all the angst, as we’ve mentioned before, DPF and the rest of National HQ (well the ones who can walk and chew at the same time) realise this was the only real point of difference for National. So much so, National’s pretty much adopted tax cut as the centrepiece of its election strategy.

So, what’s left for National? An ideological determination to sell -off core State activities and a scare campaign about crime or perhaps sticking up the workers? Even by Tory standards that’s a pretty thin brew: not so much consummate politics as it is consomme politics, eh?!

As we’ve been saying for a while, the government was not ideologically opposed to cutting tax, despite what DPF would have you believe, and was likely to cut taxes only when and if it knew it could afford them. It is the only economically sensible thing to do as the Prime Minister made abundantly clear today:

“[Tax cuts] will happen because the time is right and the money is there to do it without cutting services, and without borrowing”

Perhaps National should have got another young millionaire banker to lead them with a name like Chord or Harmony - because it turns out there is only one note in this Key and it is being drowned by a much richer melody from others.

I don’t expect Labour will be naive enough to believe that putting a few dollars into any one’s pockets is going to win an election - they’re not the Exclusive Brethren (ahem). But by neutralising National’s only real solid policy platform, I think voters will be left asking what will voting National actually achieve - except selling off more assets, industrial disharmony and a huge taxpayer bill for new prisons.

Parliamentary years

As we’ve noted earlier, the National spin (a la Mr Farrar) is that the Cabinet reshuffle is tired. Old. Recycled.

But it got me thinking, the National team must be really, really fresh compared with Labour. I mean, Clark and Cullen, Mallard, King and Goff came in the eighties, for crying out loud! But not one to base my opinions on hearsay and speculation, I thought I would actually work out what the relative differences in average time spent in Parliament was between National and Labour’s top twenty MPs.

According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations National’s top twenty have spent, on average, 11.75 years in Parliament. For Labour’s top twenty, the average is 13.85. So the difference between the two teams’ averages is less than a parliamentary term.

Oh, and just for DPF, I should mention the medians are 11 and 14 years respectively. So, the cumulative experience of the two top twenty members is pretty comparable.

If National’s average was like its Leader - 6 years - then I think it might be justified in boasting about its ‘freshness’ compared with Labour. But the differences between the two teams is simply not as dramatic as National is trying to have you believe.

So, forget about this argument about freshness. Just think about the match-ups: Goff and King v Power (no contest), Mallard v Smith (non-stop brawls), Carter v Rich (TKOs).

Key has to do something pretty dramatic, doesn’t he?

Views on the reshuffle

I see DPF is using his new fave reporters to represent the reshuffle as being underwhelming.  Of course, what DPF is a little more coy about is how this is a straight take from the talking points and that the ruse of using the journo comments is to mask the blatant partisan nature of his commentary.  But, we’re not so coy, here’s the exact words of Key’s official press release:

Helen Clark has failed to show leadership by rewarding Trevor Mallard instead of punishing him for his behaviour in Parliament, says National Party Leader John Key.

“Instead of demoting him, she has effectively given him a portfolio promotion by handing him three influential new responsibilities - in addition to retaining his SOEs and Associate Finance roles.

“No fair minded Kiwi would view Trevor Mallard’s portfolio promotion as an exercise in caucus discipline.

“It also makes a mockery of Helen Clark’s claim that Mr Mallard is suffering from stress.  Surely giving him more responsibilities and workload adds to his stress, especially in an area like Environment which is supposedly central to Labour’s re-election plans.

“The reshuffle is a lame exercise in recycling, not renewal.

“The same people are still in charge – Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. They are the same tired old faces singing the same tired old songs.

“I note that Labour’s master strategist, Pete Hodgson, has lost Health, which is an admission of failure in a portfolio that has had billions thrown at it over the past nine years for seemingly little result.”

There is, of course, huge irony in having Key talk about Lame recycling.  He no doubt took soundings about releasing this press release from his long-term parliamentary colleagues: Bill English, Nick Smith, Lockwood Smith, Murray McCully (National’s master strategist), Gerry Brownlee, Tony Ryall, David Carter, Wayne Mapp, Maurice Williamson.

Aside from Power, Collins and Rich - Key’s core executive team is the very epitome of “recycled” and, judging on recent policy announcement gaffes, you’d have to describe them as pretty lame too.

The most exciting thing about the recasting of Cabinet is how it will put tremendous pressure on National.  Key’s front bench is tired and worn and stopped making dents on the government months ago.  A reinvigorated Cabinet lineup will only add to the  pressure on Key to get his own house in order.

Talking about the reshuffle, I was heartened to see Phil Goff, a considerable talent, get Corrections.  National love talking up Goff as a rival to Clark and no doubt they will attempt to represent Corrections as being Clark’s poison chalice.  But hang on, there is a simpler and politically more savvy explanation.  Goff previously managed the Justice/Corrections portfolio when in Opposition to devastating effect.  He was, perhaps, one of the most successful Opposition spokespeople ever on the topic.  He was also a highly successful Justice Minister - overhauling major pieces of legislation like sentencing, parole and bail - all items that had languished under previous National governments fearful of making such sweeping changes. So, as we move into an election phase who else would you get comprehensively on top of the Corrections portfolio safely?

Corrections has been, rightly or wrongly, the only real punches National managed to land earlier this year (putting aside gimmes like Field).  This is due in large part to a combination of the public’s fascination with prisons and the efforts of a very ambitious and hardworking Opposition spokesperson - Simon Power.  But Power’s initial successes have dimmed and he’s looking increasingly like a one-trick pony: scandal chaser.  And while the “if it bleeds it leads” tends to push law and order to the forefront of the media and public’s attention, there’s only so many times you can play that tune without it getting a tad boring.

If Simon Power failed to comprehensively best O’Connor in the Corrections portfolio how do you think he will do with a real heavyweight like Goff?  Simon Power is, as they eloquently say in The Terrace’s cafes,  “fucked”.  No more lazy, half-arsed point scoring or simple minded rumour mongering.  Goff’s  appointment to Corrections when taken with the savvy move to put the powerhouse Annette King into Justice (while retaining Police) effectively nullifies National’s ability to mount a convincing Law and Order line in the lead up to the Election.  Very, very smart politics.

It’s the same with Mallard’s move to Labour.   OK, it’s meant to be a bit of censure (moving down the ranks and losing Education) -  but putting someone like Mallard in Labour has real strategic significance for National.   National is, after the party supposed to be closest to the business community (although I would contest that).   National’s unidimensional economic policy of tax cuts is going to look extremely lame in comparison to the government’s broad strategy for economic transformation.  National is going to really struggle to mount any successful attacks on the government’s economic vision - not only because it is a bloody impressive one - but also because it now has to contend with one of the strongest defenders in Mallard.  You could call it an overkill having Mallard defending the Labour - but I forsee he will use the economic transformation message as a platform for a more devastating attack on National’s obvious policy vacuum.

I think the MSM are missing the real story of the reshuffle and that’s it’s significance on National. There’s a lot of rumination and speculation about whether or not this reinvigorates Labour - but it clearly has major implications for National.